Sometimes We Walk With Others

Sometimes We Walk With Others

Sometimes We Walk With Others
oil on paper
14 x 19 inches (plus a small border for framing)
This item is unmounted and unframed.
(click on the image to purchase)

sometimes
the rescue
is
not
heroic.
​
sometimes
it's simply

another human
sitting beside you

refusing 
to let you

fight
your war
alone.   
- instagram.com/REVIVEYOURROAR

This week I have another story for you.

Wonder Mike and I were walking this past weekend and came upon a woman sitting on a nearby street corner. Her head was in her hands and she was sobbing. 

I stopped, crouched down and asked if she was ok. She said no, she wasn't - that she was so sad. I asked if I could sit with her, she nodded, and so I sat on the sidewalk. I asked if she needed anything, and she replied just someone to listen.  I could do that, and so I did for much of the afternoon.

I could share her story here - her impending homelessness, her trauma, her life of struggles, her loss of love and employment and school. Instead, my thoughts keep going to the people who pretended we were not there: a big truck that parked, running, tailpipe in our faces for twenty minutes despite my attempts to wave it off to idle somewhere else; a lady who decided to mow the lawn all around us, grass flying everywhere; a dozen passersby who never acknowledged us at all.

I thought this is what it feels like to be invisible in our society.  This is what this woman feels like every day.

It is hard for me to sit and listen without leaping in to offer advice, solutions, opinions, consolation. But sometimes people just want to be seen and heard. So I listened, occasionally reflecting back her own resiliance, her big-heartedness, her long period of suffering, her loneliness, her pain. And I waited, solutions and advice in my pocket, ready to rescue. In the end, when she was no longer crying and was calm, she said she had pills in her bag and had been ready to take drastic measures.

Oh.
My heart.
​
Instead, she thanked me for listening, asked me for a hug (which I willingly gave) and decided to go meet a friend and try life again. She just needed someone to listen.

Once again, I learned not everyone wants money, not everyone wants a heroic rescue. People want to be seen and heard. I can do that. 

I also re-learned a lesson from long ago: the bystander has power. The power to do harm by walking by and the power to help by engaging. This is true in a small neighborhood, in a city, in a country and in the wide world.

I leave you with this quote from a big-hearted human being who happens to be a dear, wise friend: 
​
It's part of our work as artists and writers to walk with others who make us uncomfortable, who we want to help who we can't help, who we can't help. -  THEA FIORE-BLOOM

---

About the art: often, when I get a concept sketch just right, I enlarge it  and create a stencil.  This helps me remove the anxiety about reproducing the sketch without losing the parts of it I really like. I did that for this piece, creating a mask of the composition  and painting a loose background layer around the mask (outside-in). Next I began building the layers of the face (inside-out).  After the face took shape, I moved to the hair, hand, clothing and finally the sweet companion bird on her shoulder.  By this point the initial background layer was thoroughly dry, so I darkened and cooled the color with a heavy layer of paint. Finally, I grabbed my favorite small rubber wedge and carved in texture to the wet paint, adding movement and highlights. 

The audio and video to this blog is on YouTube!
Also a little animation to see the art come to life.